Abstract
Objectives: This study aims to alleviate dental hygienists’ job stress caused by emotional labor, lower their turnover rate, improve the working environment, and offer better quality of services by understanding correlations among emotional labor, job characteristics, job stress, and turnover intention. Methods: A survey was conducted in the subjects with dental hygienists who were working at general hospitals, dental university hospitals, and private dental clinics located in Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Chungnam by the convenience sampling method from June 1 through 30, 2017, and the collected data were analyzed using by SPSS Windows Ver. 22.0 (IBM CO, Armonk, NY, USA) and AMOS 21. As the statistical analysis methods, convergent validity test, structural equation model analysis and model goodness of fit were conducted using independent samples t-test, one-way ANOVA, path analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis. Results: It turned out that the more dental hygienists’ deep acting of emotional labor and the more their workload of job characteristics, the higher their job stress got, and that the higher their job stress, the higher their turnover intention got. Conclusions: As a method of lowering dental hygienists’ turnover intention, they may resolve emotional disharmony with their own problem-solving method, but it is necessary to develop and support organizational culture for the improvement of working environment. Dental hygienists’ organizations should implement the measures to minimize their turnover rate and job stress level by allocating appropriate workload.
Figures & Tables
Structural equation model (standardized estimates)
